Tag Archive: hunger strike

With fascist fuckweasels ignoring his hunger strike, anarchist prisoner Sean Swain has vowed to refuse his blood pressure medication, beginning February 9. This medication keeps his blood pressure regulated. To stop taking this medication “cold turkey” is extremely dangerous, as it could cause a spike in blood pressure which can lead to heart attack, stroke or aneurysm.

Within 48 hours of suspending his medication, Sean will be in serious danger of medical problems and anticipates he will soon be held incommunicado in a torture cell, in a fuckweasel effort to break his will and cut him off from the outside world. But, as he pointed out, that will not stop his blood pressure from spiking.

At least 200 people stopped eating on Fri. Oct. 31st, and more people will join today (Monday)

Tacoma, WA – Immigrant detainees are putting their bodies on the line for the third time this year, to call attention to the inhumane treatment in the GEO Group detention center. Geo Group, a corporate giant that profits off the unnecessary suffering of those it imprisons for the convenience of ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, while their civil immigration status is investigated. Advocates are concerned that hunger strikers will suffer retaliation similar to the retaliation inflicted during previous hunger strikes. Hunger strikers were placed in solitary confinement for up to 30 days and threatened with force-feeding. Last spring hunger strikers received promises from ICE officials that have never been implemented.

Geo Group has been allowed to supplement their lavish compensation of more than $100 per day per person with a cluster of self-reinforcing schemes to profit even more from the people placed in their “care.” Those schemes include: (more…)

In the summer of 2012, a prisoner who had been repeatedly beaten with impunity by guards at Central Prison’s notorious Unit One began a lawsuit against the prison and against NC DPS.

This lawsuit soon expanded to become a class action with seven other prisoners who had had similar experiences at the same segregation unit. In particular, guards were known for taking prisoners to “the desert,” a camera-less area of the facility, to beat them. Serious injuries occurred.

Now, one of those prisoners, Stanley Corbett, Jr., has reported to us by letter that he is being retaliated against by the guards at Warren CI in Manson, NC, to which he was transferred after beginning the lawsuit.

Retaliation has included censorship of mail, denial of medical treatment, and urine in his food.

Corbett has announced that on Monday, August 25th, he will begin a hunger strike until such retaliation ends.

Supporters are encouraged to contact the NC DPS director as well as the administration at Warren CI to express their concern and anger that a prisoner is being retaliated against for exposing guards’ brutality.

On July 8, 2013, 30,000 California prisoners launched what became a 60-day mass hunger strike. One year later, however, Luis Esquivel is still sitting in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) in solitary confinement in California’s Pelican Bay State Prison. “Right now, my uncle is in his cell with no windows,” said his niece, Maribel Herrera. “It’s like sitting in a bathroom – your sink is there, your toilet is there, your bed is there. And you’re just sitting there. I can only think about that for so long because it hurts.”

Herrera’s uncle has been in solitary confinement for 15 years. “I hadn’t seen my uncle since I was a child,” said Herrera. “I can’t even remember hugging him.” When she visited him in 2012, her first-ever visit to Pelican Bay, more than 850 miles away from her family’s home in San Diego, hers was the first visit Esquivel had received in seven years. (more…)

After a huge hunger strike to protest the state prison system’s inhuman conditions, California is threatening to ban any written material deemed “oppositional to authority and society.”

Last week, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation proposed sweeping new regulations for mail going both into and out of the state’s prisons and jails. Coined “obscenity regulations,” on face value they appear to ban material that “depicts or describes sexual misconduct.” Yet, if you scroll further down the long, technical parameters laid out on CDCR’s website you’ll find they’re casting a much broader net—such as censorship of any material deemed “oppositional to authority and society.”“There’s a lot of non-sexual speech that will be banned if these regulations are put into effect,” says Paul Wright, Director of Prison Legal News. “This isn’t a new tactic, for hundreds of years the guise of ‘obscenity’ has been used to crush political speech, not just among prisoners, originally it was used to punish criticism of the church.”

It’s no coincidence that these enhanced restrictions are coming from California, where 29,000 prisoners went on hunger strike for 60 days last year in a historically unprecedented protest against inhumane prison conditions—namely prolonged solitary confinement. A large part of the hunger strike’s success in capturing international attention had to do with the ability of activists, lawyers and family members to get out the voices and opinions of the men inside who initiated the strike, at least in part through written correspondence. Under these new regulations, letters like those might not make it through next time. (more…)

On Monday, May 19th, 7 prisoners at Polk Correctional Institution in Butner, NC began a hunger strike in protest of a range of indignities and grievances. According to prisoners in the facility, additional men started joining the strike after the first day. The strike was initiated in part by prisoners who were transferred out of Central Prison, following a class action lawsuit against the facility for abuse by guards in various “blind spots” around Unit One. That lawsuit has already forced the administration’s hand in videotaping any cell extractions by guards.

A demands and grievances list was sent by the prisoners to comrades on the outside. It included complaints around filthy food and ventilation units, no way to clean the cells, a law library, functional emergency call buttons, the use of “nutra-loaf” as punishment, inadequate mental health care for mentally ill prisoners, the censorship of political and religious texts, and keeping prisoners with no new infractions on solitary for years on end. (more…)

2) Seven prisoners at Polk CI in Butner, NC have started a hunger strike to protest their conditions. According to prisoners in the facility, additional men have been joining the strike since that first day. The strike was initiated in part by prisoners who were transferred out of Central Prison, following a class action lawsuit against the facility for abuse by guards in various “blind spots” around Unit One. That lawsuit has already forced the administration’s hand in videotaping any cell extractions by guards. You can read their demands here.

On Monday, May 19th, 7 prisoners at Polk Correctional Institution in Butner, NC began a hunger strike in protest of a range of indignities and grievances. According to prisoners in the facility, additional men have been joining the strike since that first day. The strike was initiated in part by prisoners who were transferred out of Central Prison, following a class action lawsuit against the facility for abuse by guards in various “blind spots” around Unit One. That lawsuit has already forced the administration’s hand in videotaping any cell extractions by guards.

A demands and grievances list was sent by the prisoners to comrades on the outside. It reads as follows:

Please help spread the word that on June 13th at 8pm, there will be a noise demo at the downtown Durham jail. The call-out is part of several benefits and letter writing events going on throughout the triangle that week as part of the June 11th Day of Solidarity with Long-Term Anarchist and Eco Prisoners.

It’s also taking place in opposition to recent statements/ordinances by the Durham City Council that seek to criminalize protest. Specifically, a recent statement forbids protests at night, protests without a permit, and the use of masks or other tools to hide identity from law enforcement. It is clearly a symbolic gesture at containing the kinds of anger and protest that erupted this past winter after Chuy Huerta died in police custody, which helped to galvanize and catalyze increase public anger and opposition to DPD.Finally, the demo is in solidarity with the prisoners in the jail, who have engaged in various acts of resistance and organizing over the last couple years, as well as with prisoners currently on hunger strike at Polk CI in Butner, NC over a wide range of grievances.Please spread the word! Folks are encouraged to show up loud and angry, with banners, drums, pots and pans, and whatever else they’d like to use to make some serious noise.

On this upcoming Monday, April 28th we are asking and encouraging people to participate in a Call-In Day in support of the prisoners in the High Security Unit at Menard Correctional Center in Illinois who are facing retaliation for engaging in a hunger strike in January. Prisoners there have been beaten by guards and metal boxes have been placed over their windows—preventing future engagement with noise demonstrations outside the prison, but also preventing sunlight from coming into their cells and increasing the sensory deprivation they experience in solitary confinement.

We hope that any pressure on the administration can draw attention to the inhumane treatment prisoners are forced to endure and help prisoners get their demands met.

We are trying to focus our calls between 10am and noon on Monday, April 28th: But calling at other times is also useful.

Warden Kim Butler (New as of April 2014 and the first woman warden at Menard–a 20-year veteran of the Illinois Dept of Corrections).
618-826-5071 ext. 2225